J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Milan to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Various Buildings, Probably at Vicenza; ?the Villa Capra (La Rotonda) 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Various Buildings, Probably at Vicenza; ?the Villa Capra (La Rotonda)’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Recto:
Various Buildings, Probably at Vicenza; ?the Villa Capra (La Rotonda) 1819
D14376
Turner Bequest CLXXV 33
Pencil on white wove paper, 185 x 112 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Palazz [sic] d[...]’ centre right and ‘Ionic [...] Tuscan’ towards bottom right, descending vertically
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘33’ top left, ascending vertically and ‘300’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 33’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Most of these hurried architectural studies were made with the page turned vertically. The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Various buildings’): ‘Palaces at Vicenza and Villa Capra’.1 Bell similarly marked Finberg’s augmented entries for other pages in this sketchbook in his 1930 In Venice with Turner: ‘Vicenza’.2
The particular buildings are as yet unidentified. Another sketchbook Turner carried with him on this tour includes travel notes by James Hakewill (1778–1843), with whom he had been collaborating on the Picturesque Tour of Italy (published in 1820); see Nicola Moorby’s Introduction to the Route to Rome book (Tate; Turner Bequest CLXXI). Hakewill mentioned: ‘Vicenza – | Get a guide to show you | Palladios house and some of | his Palaces. | go to the Rotondo Villa’ (Tate D13901; Turner Bequest CLXXI 23). At the bottom right in relation to the others, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, is a slightly more detailed view of a building with a grand portico, which does bear some resemblance to Palladio’s renowned Villa Capra (‘La Rotonda’) outside Vicenza. As the portico appears to have four columns here, rather than the six on each of the villa’s four identical sides, and other details are recorded so slightly, the identification can hardly be conclusive.

For other views, see under folio 32 verso opposite (D14375).

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.512.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (before 1936) in copy of A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, Prints and Drawings Study Room, British Museum, London, p.[?]163, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (undated notes, Tate catalogue files).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Various Buildings, Probably at Vicenza; ?the Villa Capra (La Rotonda) 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-various-buildings-probably-at-vicenza-the-villa-capra-la-r1186489, accessed 07 February 2025.